1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to an electronic program guide that allows a television viewer to access and interact with television viewing information.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the number of television stations provided on a cable system increase and satellite antennas become more popular, the multitude of television programming available to the viewer is increasing at a significant rate. Viewers must consult lengthy program guides in order to select programs for viewing. For example, if the viewer is interested in watching a particular program, the viewer may need to read a multitude of program listings in order to learn when and on what channel the particular program is being broadcast. Even electronic program guides provide no particular method for a viewer to easily determine when a particular show will be broadcast during a particular week.
In some cases, the viewer does not have a particular program in mind but is still interested in watching television. That viewer would need to sort through a large magnitude of information, including information relevant to shows that the viewer is not interested in. A more efficient method for the viewer to find a suitable program would allow the viewer to access a listing of programs sorted by category, title, actor name or other search criteria. The viewer would be able to restrict searching to the category the viewer is interested in.
However, current program guides are time/channel oriented. That is they display a grid of rows and columns. Each column represents a half hour interval and each row represents a channel. Sorting of television shows using these grids would require the use of many grids to display the scheduling information for an entire day or number of days. Since most display screens are not big enough to show multiple grids, accessing the sorted information would be cumbersome.
One method that reduces the number of grids includes sorting on a particular time slot. However, this method only provides access to scheduling information for a very limited time period and results in a hard-to-use programming interface.
To avoid the above described problems of using a grid, some programming guides show an alphabetical list of shows with the relevant show times. However, the lists can be lengthy and are displayed in a text format that is difficult to visually scan. Typically, a user would have to read more information than is necessary to find the desired show time.
Therefore, there is a need for a programming guide that allows a viewer to access programing information relevant to the viewer interest while reducing the amount of data the user must view.